It says that I can change the load order of mods through changing the order of the data="[mod name]" in the openmw.cfg, and that "The last data= line has the highest priority (i.e. loads last, and may override material in earlier-loaded mods), and the first listed has the lowest priority."

This doesn't seem to work, as when i open the launcher the order seems to be reversed. The mods at the bottom of the openmw.cfg load first in the launcher, which is first in the load order.

The data= lines are for the data folders for the files themselves, for example if two mods contain sound/cr/skel/moan.wav. then the later one takes priority. The content= lines are for the esm/esp/omwaddon order.

Maybe this is more of a feature request then, it makes a lot of sense to have the default ordering of esps the same as the ordering as the data="mod" entries, at least before they get manually changed.

That can easily break for mods that contain multiple esps (for example, a big overhaul mod that sits low in the load order, but contains compatibility patches that should come after other mods). And given that the content= lines are declared in the same file as the data= lines, it doesn't make much sense to not use the order of the content lines as they are. If you edit openmw.cfg to reorder the data lines, you can reorder the content lines while you're there too.